City looks to arrest police OT

Published 10:17 pm, Saturday, March 16, 2013

STAMFORD -- City officials are moving to hire more police officers in an effort to control overtime spending, which surpassed $5 million for the first time last fiscal year.

Stamford racked up $5.1 million in total police overtime for 2012 and is on track to spend about the same amount this fiscal year, according to the Office of Policy and Management. Sixteen officers, including one lateral hire from another department and five military veterans, will have joined the Stamford police force by the end of June, Public Safety Director Ted Jankowski said.

"Right now we're on a hiring campaign to address the overtime and I think we're doing very well," Jankowski said Thursday. "Once we bring the manpower up to a reasonable level then we can start looking at other avenues to address overtime."

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The Board of Finance and Board of Representatives will hold a joint public hearing 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Westhill auditorium. Members of the public are invited to attend and voice their concerns on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2013-14.

But even with the additional hires, Mayor Michael Pavia is still requesting $4.2 million for police overtime in fiscal year 2013-14. The budget request means the police department is expected to spend $350,000 a month on overtime expenses.

"That's the price that we're paying -- in addition to the cost center of the Stamford Police Department -- that makes Stamford the safest city in New England," Pavia said after unveiling his proposed budget earlier this month.

The police department hasn't met its overtime budget once in the last eight fiscal years. In 2005 the department spent $3 million on overtime costs, which was $600,000 over budget. Last fiscal year police overtime spending exceeded the budgeted amount by $2 million.

Jankowski and newly-appointed Police Chief Jon Fontneau said low staffing levels are driving overtime spending. Police budgeted salaries for 278 officers in each of the last three fiscal years, but the department is not always fully staffed due to injuries and retirements.

Fontneau said he is working to get injured police officers back on the job, which helps reduce overtime costs.

"We're working very hard to get people back to work quickly," he said. "There's quite a bit of effort going on like that."

There are currently 269 officers in uniform, police union chief Joseph Kennedy said. Stamford, which spans about 40 square miles and is home to an estimated 123,000 residents, was ranked the nation's 14th-safest city with a population over 100,000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2011.

"Our staffing levels -- for a city of this size and what the people expect of it -- our guys will tell you they want more," Kennedy said.

Norwalk, which has 181 sworn police officers, spent $2.2 million on police overtime last fiscal year, according to the city's budget office. Bridgeport, with about 430 officers, spent $7.4 million on overtime, said police spokesman William Kaempffer.

Stamford police officers are undoubtedly busy, Jankowski said. The force spent about $3.1 million on overtime for the first eight months of this fiscal year responding to 83,291 calls for service. In February alone Stamford police received 9,500 calls resulting in 235 arrests, 270 suspicious person investigations and 2,340 motor vehicle stops, Jankowski said.

"Under Chief Fontneau's leadership we have been successful in reducing crime by more than 5 percent and serious crime by more than 10 percent," Jankwoski said. "I am very proud of all our police officers for the job that they perform in protecting the residents and visitors of our great city."

Patrol costs account for 55 percent of total police overtime spending this fiscal year, according to an analysis provided by OPM. Investigation-related overtime, by contrast, is 17 percent of the total distribution followed by headquarters overtime, 12 percent, and narcotics and organized crime, 8 percent. Task forces, communications, internal affairs and auxiliary services make up the remaining 10 percent of police overtime spending.

Forty-five percent of patrol overtime is incurred when accidents or crimes require police officers to remain on duty to either respond to incidents or prepare for related court appearances, Fontneau said. Special events, such as the Thanksgiving Day and Veterans Day parades, also boost overtime costs.

The police racked up patrol overtime Thursday afternoon when they responded to a car crash on Long Ridge Road that sent two Westhill High School students to the hospital, for example. Monday's shooting outside the Stamford Town Center also resulted in police overtime, Fontneau said. The Stamford teenager, shot in the leg by a Norwalk 17-year-old over a cell phone dispute, has been released from the hospital and police arrested the shooter.

"That adds up pretty quickly," said Fontneau, a 32-year department veteran whom Pavia appointed chief in October. "We can't just close our briefcases and go home and say we'll come back tomorrow."

Still, Fontneau said he has put more police officers on patrol duty and is working to limit the number of shift hold-overs in an effort to keep overtime under control.

"We are managing the end-of-our-shift overtime," he said. "We are prioritizing different calls and calls that aren't as important that can wait until the next shift, we're waiting for the next shift."

The police union's contract, however, contains certain provisions that exacerbate overtime expenses. When a police officer is called back from off-duty, for example, he or she must be paid a minimum of four hours at 1.5 times their regular hourly rate. If the "call back" hours overlap with an officer's scheduled shift, he or she makes their regular rate plus the time-and-a-half "call back" wages.

"That's ridiculous," Board of Representatives Fiscal Committee Chairman Jay Fountain said. "I mean, I understand the reasoning. If you call somebody back from out of town, who has to come all the way back, you don't want to call them back for one hour. But I hope they're addressing that in the contract negotiations."

The police contract's minimum staffing requirement, which requires 18 police officers and three supervisory officers to be on duty during day shifts, accounted for 50 percent of the department's patrol overtime this fiscal year. Low staffing levels lead to overtime costs as supervisors are forced to ask officers to work extra hours to meet the minimum manpower requirements, Kennedy said.

"The overtime from patrol -- the biggest effect on that is being understaffed," Kennedy said. "That affects, on a daily basis, the way you put out your patrol squads and it has a ripple effect on all the other units. You want to get more people on patrol so you don't have those call-back situations where you have minimum staffing requirements."

Fountain said he would expect hiring to bring down police overtime similar to the way firefighter overtime dropped since 23 new firefighters joined the Stamford Fire Department last year. The fire department, which budgeted $4.25 million for overtime this fiscal year, is expected to come in below budget, at $3.9 million, and is projecting an overall $72,000 budgetary surplus this year due mainly to "overtime avoidance."

"You have to get to a balance between the number of uniformed officers and overtime," Board of Finance Democrat John Louizos said. "With overtime there are certain savings associated with benefits and fixed costs. So overtime is not all bad, there's some inherent savings, but on the other hand I've always been a proponent that we need to boost the number of our police force."

But some have questioned whether the police department's minimum staffing levels are too high. A $50,000 efficiency study commissioned by Pavia's administration in 2011 and completed by the Matrix Consulting Group suggested reducing the staffing requirements from 18 to 12 officers for day shifts and from 16 to 10 officers on the midnight tour.

The consultants' findings were not well-received by police officers and many city officials, who worried reducing staffing levels would threaten public safety. The Board of Representatives will hold another meeting on the Matrix report in May, and the study's authors will participate via conference call, Fountain said.

Altering the police department's minimum manpower limits would require a change in the union contract, which expired in 2011. Director of Human Resources Emmet Hibson was not available for comment on whether the city plans to address minimum manpower in the upcoming contract negotiations.

Kennedy doesn't support lowering the staffing level threshold, but said his members are more focused on preserving members' benefits.

"We're here to protect our benefits; our pension and our health benefits are the most important things to us," Kennedy said.

Police benefits cost the city even more than overtime. Unlike many other police forces, Stamford police pensions are based only on straight salaries and do not include overtime or extra duty earnings, Kennedy said. They also do not provide a cost of living increase after a police officer retires. Even still, the city contributed $4.3 million to the police's pension fund alone last fiscal year. Medical and life insurance for current and retired employees is expected to total $7.8 million this fiscal year.

The Board of Finance and Board of Representatives will hold a joint public hearing 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Westhill auditorium. Members of the public are invited to attend and voice their concerns on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2013-14.